


Lily with the Wild Red Hair

by whichstiel



Series: Season 12 Codas [11]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Episode Tag, Episode: s12e10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets, Established Relationship, Future Fic, Gen, Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets, Lily Sunder's past, M/M, Magic, Season/Series 12, Souls, episode coda, spn 12x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 19:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9562607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Castiel met Lily in the middle of a misty field fringed by spreading farmstead oaks. She approached him slowly, as one might a wild tiger, and stopped several feet away. He readied himself, blade heavy in his sleeve.





	

**I. The scroll**

The cave smelled like the bottom of a pond, walls slick where water seeped through to join the muddy stream bisecting the floor. Lily Sunder hiked up her skirts and waded across it with tentative, shuffling steps, the flashlight in her hand flickering weakly as though at any moment it might give out. Her hand trembled a bit. No. That wasn't true. Her entire body vibrated with anxiety. What would her mother say to see her bookworm daughter alone in a cave in the middle of the night? But no matter. She'd feel her way through the cave over jagged stones that tore her raw if it came to it. Anything to find her quarry.

She'd come to India under the guise of vacation, ostensibly to visit the wife of a British officer serving in the area. When she arrived unannounced on Bridget May's doorstep the other woman had been flustered, though she'd managed to mask it under a stilted offer of tea. They hadn't spoken since college – and only then because they shared a class on classical literature for one semester. Lily's visit to India balanced on a rickety lie and death awaited her if it tipped. However, Lily had learned that female friendship tended to be viewed as a great mystery by old, powerful men. And friendship of any sort was like a foreign language to angels. Bridget, she suspected, was an adequate foil to throw off any suspicious guardians of the artifact she sought.

At Bridget's door Lily threw down her widowed status as though it were a calling card and was rewarded when Bridget offered to let her reside in a guest room for the week. As a married woman she'd found stability and some modicum of acceptance that seemed to excuse her academic status to the world. As a grieving widow she had freedom and nobody, including Bridget, tended to look too closely at her activities nowadays. In exchange for lodging Lily offered sanitized stories about her life as a female professor. She stuck to lighter anecdotes – being mistaken for a student or lectures from visiting artists or poets. She refrained from speaking about her area of study. The less spoken of apocalyptic literature in front of the staff the better. After two days of casual sightseeing, Lily targeted the cave and when night fell and the house slumbered, Lily made her move.

Her hand slipped to her hip where she'd strung a blade and sheath. Akobel had taught her to use it in case Ishim should ever come after her. It took her daughter May's death – and Akobel's – for her to remove it from the vanity where she had stored it uselessly that day and keep it on her person at all times. A stone rattled behind her, the noise skittering above the sound of flowing water and she froze, pulling out the blade and training her light towards the entrance. “Who's there?” Her voice shook a little and she hoped the water and the echo of the cave masked the tremble.

A figure stepped into her flashlight beam. He was tall, lithe, and dressed in loose cotton clothing light enough to flutter as he moved towards her. He held a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. “What are you doing here?” he asked in polite, accented English.

In answer she threw her flashlight, sending it spinning across the floor, and dodged to the side, rushing him to press her advantage. Wet skirts hampered her, the crack of his pistol deafened her, but in the end she won. He lay curled like a comma as blood pooled around her knife. “You'll be fine,” she told him as she secured the knots around his wrists and feet, hoping that was true. “I'll send help as soon as I get what I came for.”

In the depths of the cave she found a stone box that groaned like a beast as she slid off the heavy lid. She had wondered how any piece of lore could have survived the dank cave but upon opening the box she understood. This particular artifact, like so much in her life these days, was protected by magic. The scroll inside was dry, supple as though the leather were tanned a month ago. It felt slightly warm to the touch and she tucked it inside of her dress next to her heart.

Lily left town right away, sure at any moment to find a blade in her back. She left word with a young girl prodding a goat along the road to send someone to look after the man she left bleeding near the cave mouth. It was only when she returned home to the safety of her warded walls that she felt safe enough to unroll the scroll, much less read it.

Her apartment sat near the university, her old blood soaked house long ago sold to pay for one small bedroom, a sitting room, a kitchenette, and an expansive travel budget. She settled on the rose patterned settee and spread the scroll out along her coffee table. From it Lily read a transmutation spell. The spell was prefaced with warnings about damaged souls but all she could see was the promise of a weapon strong enough to wreak vengeance on those who had destroyed her life.

She dropped everything, walked away from her life at the university, and when she had acquired all the necessary ingredients she performed the spell.

 

**II. The Hammer**

In her first attempt to use her new powers she took up a hammer and smashed it onto her hand, splintering her fingerbones. The pain cut into her, stealing her breath momentarily. When her vision returned she dug for the angelic powers, felt them pool in the palm of her unbroken hand. As she healed herself a memory swam up, unbidden.

> _May wading through a stream. She has her dress rucked up and tied around her waist with a ribbon. The ribbon trails in the water and sticks to her calves as she bends to try to catch the tiny silver minnows flashing like quicksilver over the rocky bed._

The memory was there for a flash and then, quick as a minnow, it disappeared forever. Afterwards, Lily flexed her fingers, miraculously healed, and then sank to the floor. _It works. It works. So why do I feel like I just lost the fight?_ She drew her daughter's doll to her and sang to it until the sunrise scraped its way through her curtains.

> “I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,  
>  Borne, like a vapor, on the summer air;  
>  I see her tripping where the bright streams play,  
>  Happy as the daisies that dance on her way.”

 

**III. The Train**

The soul is greater than anything in creation. “But revenge,” Lily told the small dog sharing a sleeper cabin with her, “is greater still.” When the train crashed a few hours later Lily emerged from the wreckage with only bruises – not even enough for her to expend her angelic powers. She dusted herself off, shrugged off offers of help, and dragged herself away from the shards of train and humanity that lay along the tracks. Over the past decade Lily had begun to understand the toll of the spell as her soul became one slow motion fracture – glassware dashed across a mantle. So she picked up other protective magicks that cushioned her from the harsher aspects of world and relied on these to keep her soul intact for the long fight ahead. It could be decades – centuries, even – before she had a chance at killing Ishim and his soldiers. She needed to have enough soul left to care when the opportunity presented itself.

Lily refrained from using her power after the train wreck until she stumbled into other survivors. A young girl lay on the ground, blood bubbling from her lips. Her mother hovered over her, a wavering smile masking the full extent of her pain as her world disintegrated. The next thing Lily knew she was kneeling beside the girl, her hands stretched over the child. She had never healed any injury so serious before, nor anybody outside of herself and the pain was unbelievable. Her body burned as her soul fed the magic and oceans of memory and remembered emotion drained away into darkness. When she came to she found herself singing,

> “I long for Jeanie with the daydawn smile,  
>  Radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile;  
>  I hear her melodies, like joys gone by,  
>  Sighing round my heart o'er the fond hopes that die.”

The girl she healed looked at her steadily over her mother's shaking shoulders and as Lily met her eyes, offered a smile. Lily turned away abruptly, pushed herself upright, and lost herself in the crowd.

 

**IV. Benjamin**

Lily should have died in her first fight with an angel. Benjamin looked at her with pity in his eyes, his blade trained on her heart and a foot pressed into her elbow. Her fingers were numb, her blade too far away now to do any good. “This road you are on,” Benjamin said through the soft lips of a woman, “will destroy you. There won't be anything left of you to move on to the next life.” In response, Lily spat at the soft-eyed beast and it flapped away.

 

**V. Seliam**

Seliam was her first kill, the fight bloody and vicious. Though Ishim had called those in his _flight_ soldiers, she found that Seliam fought politely as though adhering to millenia-old rules of combat. She claimed his blade after she sliced him apart and then fell, gasping, to the wet grass. Blood drained from her body into the soil, mixing with the mud to form black ooze beneath her hands. She called on her soul again and memories flooded her once more. She sang,

> “I sigh for Jeanie, but her light form strayed  
>  Far from the fond hearts round her native glade;  
>  Her smiles have vanished and her sweet songs flown,  
>  Flitting like the dreams that have cheered us and gone.”

And then the song disappeared, burned away by holy fire.

 

**VI. Castiel**

Nearly twenty five years passed since Lily last left Castiel in Ishim's old church. She stretched her arms over her head and tangled summer grasses through her fingers, weaving them into her eternally copper hair. Celestial energy hummed around her, a constant static crackle hovering on the surface of her skin. Over the years her powers continued to expand. And Castiel? Well, Castiel had lost power with every year spent on earth. She could feel him diminishing, retreating from the heavenly wavelengths she ballooned towards. She hadn't killed any more angels since they met but she found thoughts of Castiel were never far from her mind. Lily closed her eyes and what was left of her soul leapt through space and into Castiel's dream.

Castiel sat on a rocky outcropping along a wind-scraped mountain, the only cover for his bare skin a blanket of piercingly blue sky. “Lily,” he said without turning around. “I wondered when you would find me again.”

“Castiel. I want you to--”

Castiel turned to her slowly, one arm pulling away from his knees to prop himself backward. “It's time, is it?” He sighed and looked across the ridgetop as though seeking someone's advice, then settled his sorrowful gaze on her once more. “I'll meet you here.” Coordinates flashed into her mind like etched fire and the dream dissolved abruptly. Lily's soul snapped back into her body and she packed a bag.

 

I. **Lily**

Castiel woke with a soft gasp and curled himself instinctively around Dean. He tucked his hand high around Dean's chest and slotted his leg through Dean's so that they resembled more of an intricate knot than two men sleeping. He pressed his nose into the short hairs at the back of Dean's neck and took one deep breath, then another. Dean hummed at the contact and, if anything, seemed to burrow deeper into Castiel's embrace.

“Mmmph,” Dean huffed in barely alert irritation.

“Sshhh, go back to sleep,” Castiel crooned. “Sorry, bad dream.”

“Hmmm,” Dean's response was barely audible but he reached for Castiel's hand, drawing it up to his lips. He laid a gentle kiss on Castiel's fingers before tucking their hands back into his side and pushing his hips deeper into the curve of Castiel's body. “Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” He lay with Dean for a long time listening to the minutes of the clock tick past and the quiet breathing of his lover. Then, reluctantly, he pulled away and rolled out of bed as silently and stealthily as he could manage.

“Where you goin'?”

Dean's sleepy drawl hauled Castiel up short and he smiled fondly. He leaned one knee into the memory foam and kissed Dean's graying temple once, tenderly. “Can't sleep,” he lied. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mmmph,” Dean replied and, astonishingly, did as he was told.

Castiel got dressed quietly and left the bunker before the sun came up, a note laid on the kitchen table serving as both explanation and apology. It wasn't that he wanted to face Lily alone. He had no intention of rushing to his death. But even after all these years Dean's hot head tangled things. If he had any hope of talking Lily down from resuming her murderous spree, it was likely best to attempt it alone. He could sense her power, even in his dream. She must be nearly soulless by now.

Castiel met Lily in the middle of a misty field fringed by spreading farmstead oaks. She approached him slowly, as one might a wild tiger, and stopped several feet away. He readied himself, blade heavy in his sleeve.

“Castiel,” she said. “I've become stronger since we last met.”

“I know,” he said. “I can feel it.”

“You've become weaker.”

Castiel shook his head. “Only in some ways.”

She nodded, her mouth drawn up in a bitter half smile. Then she pulled out a blade and he tensed, his own sword dropping into his hand. To his surprise, though, she tossed her blade at his feet and then collapsed to her knees.

“Castiel,” she looked up at him as though uttering a prayer. “I feel like a star, expanding towards my death. I think soon my soul will disappear entirely.”

“I-- It's possible.” Castiel looked around as though expecting an ambush. He still held the blade ready in his hand. “That was the danger in the spell.”

“Does that mean I'll be an angel?”

Castiel looked into her eyes. “Perhaps, of a sort.”

“And when I die that will be it?”

“Likely,” Castiel said. He grimaced. “Unless you're me, I suppose.”

She pulled the eyepatch off of her face, fingers shaking so he could see the Heaven-whitened eye. Both cheeks were streaked with tears. “I can still cry, though. That must mean there's some of me left.”

Castiel slid away his blade and slowly approached her. When she showed no signs of fear or rage, he knelt carefully in front of her. “Yes, there is. But I don't know if you can get it back. Once it's lost...”

She laughed bitterly. “I know. Bargains and all that. Still, I figured if _you_ can grow a soul, maybe I can do the same.”

Castiel pulled back, shocked. “What did you say?”

She smiled then and it was almost gentle. “I'm surely almost all angel now, Castiel. I can feel a soul within you, knocking about in that empty angel head of yours. It's been growing for years. Maybe since we met last time, maybe before?” She shook her head. “I don't know. I wasn't powerful enough back then, to tell. Castiel. Haven't you wondered where your power has gone?”

He sputtered, overwhelmed, and saw it then inside himself where he had never bothered to look. He met her eyes, his face crowned with awe, tears slipping down his face. “I didn't know...”

“If you can grow a god-forsaken human soul,” she said, “then maybe I can too. Maybe I can find it again before I die. Maybe that way I'll see--” She cleared her throat. “If anything is proof that angelic power can become something...greater...it's you.” Lily shook her head and knotted her hands in front of her. “Castiel, please. What do I do?”

For a while he had no reply and the sound of the wind and songbirds in the distant trees filled the field. Then, he spoke. 'If there's one thing I've learned, Lily Sunder,” and Castiel's voice – once powerful enough to shake the ground they knelt on – trembled. “It's that humans can do anything. I can still feel your soul, Lily. There's still time.”

She sobbed and crumpled to the ground like a penitent experiencing revelation. She said in a choked voice, like a litany, “It's amazing what a human can do with a little bit of purpose and an abundance of time.” When she lifted herself up again it was with a new fire in her eyes. “I'll be better. I'll find my humanity. For the people I loved and lost. For myself.”

Castiel smiled, joy jangling as large as his fledgling soul, and said, “So will I.”

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics from the old song [Jeanie with the light brown hair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanie_with_the_Light_Brown_Hair#Lyrics).
> 
> Also, why is this "episode coda" almost 3k? *shrugs* :)
> 
> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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